For Diane Windsor and her son, the anti-vaxx movement represents the difference between life and death. In June 2018, he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and needed immediate treatment. He and Diane had had a strained relationship because of his ongoing battle with addiction, but they found common ground as they battled for his survival.
He endured multiple rounds of Chemo, a round of Car-T Cell Therapy, and full-body radiation, which wiped out all the childhood vaccinations he once had and left him extraordinarily immunocompromised and vulnerable to diseases to which he had previously been immune. Diane had never entirely understood the anti-vaxx movement, but with her son’s health now under threat, her anger grew. He went into remission, and Diane wrote the YA novel Stuck, which tells the story of two best friends, Angie, who is immuno-compromised due to leukemia, and Cassidy, who is unvaccinated.
Now two years later, Diane and her family are still fighting to keep her son healthy and mend their relationship. She hopes that writing Stuck and sharing her family's story helps others realize the truth about how crucial vaccines are to the immuno-compromised.